Monday, September 26, 2011

Vintage plane lands in Arizona field after engine failure.

THATCHER, AZ - Authorities say a pilot escaped injury after making a forced landing in a field in eastern Arizona Monday morning.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the plane lost partial engine power and the pilot was forced to land in a field in Thatcher around 8:50 a.m.

The pilot was the only person on board and was not injured.

Neighbor Dale Holladay told ABC15 he "heard this strange noise that sounded like a truck coming down the road with a flat tire."

His son-in-law then called and told Holladay to check out the plane that had landed in a cotton field to the east of his home.

Holladay described the plane as a WWII vintage Japanese "Kate" torpedo/dive bomber and explained the pilot said he was headed back to Texas after a weekend airshow in Buckeye.

The FAA will investigate the incident, according to Gregor.


A pilot flying a post-WWII-era military training plane was forced to make an emergency landing in a cotton field in Thatcher Monday morning after the plane's engine lost power.

Pilot William Fier who was the only occupant in the aircraft, landed the single-engine Harvard Mark IV just before 9 a.m. and walked away without a scratch.

"He did an excellent job of getting it down with very minimal damage to the aircraft," said Thatcher Police Sgt. Mark Stevens. He said the prop and some sheet metal would need to be repaired.

Stevens said that Fier was with a group of seven planes coming from an air show and heading to Santa Teresa, N.M. Five of the other pilots continued on to their destination and one landed at a nearby airport.

The damaged plane will be hauled out of the field on a flatbed truck and repaired in Thatcher, according to authorities.

The plane, built in the early 1950s, is owned by American Airpower Heritage Museum in Midland, Texas. It was painted to look like a Japanese airplane from World War II.

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